


Something Blue

by Mia_writes



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Blue Sargent-centric, Bluesey - Freeform, Except it's about how Blue doesn't want to get married, F/M, Marriage, POV Blue Sargent, Post-Canon, Pynch Wedding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 18:52:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18857011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mia_writes/pseuds/Mia_writes
Summary: Blue Sargent does not want to get married.Marriage is an outdated patriarchal tradition that stamps women with their husbands’ last names like they are a monogrammed piece of luggage. Marriage enforces traditional gender roles, women with a cocktail in hand and dinner on the table and “hello dear, how was work?” Marriage is about belonging to someone, and Blue doesn’t belong to anybody but herself.She knows that Gansey feels differently.





	Something Blue

**Author's Note:**

> A little Bluesey because Blue Sargent is a badass and deserves appreciation.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

Blue Sargent has never wanted to get married.

Marriage is an outdated patriarchal tradition that stamps women with their husbands’ last names like they are a monogrammed piece of luggage. Marriage enforces traditional gender roles, women with a cocktail in hand and dinner on the table and “hello dear, how was work?” Marriage is about belonging to someone, and Blue doesn’t belong to anybody but herself.

She knows that Gansey feels differently.

He has never brought it up with her, but she knows this is true. She knows this because she knows Gansey, inside and out. If this desire was part of his President Cell-Phone facade, it would be easier to dismiss. But it’s not. Marriage isn’t a box that Richard Campbell Gansey III wants to tick on his way to a picture-perfect life. Marriage is a dream that Gansey, her Gansey, has.

He sees beauty in it. Gansey has always been fond of tradition, of titles, and of fairytales. Any of those reasons could be behind his desire to get married. But Blue doesn’t think any of them are the heart of the matter.

Gansey has always been a boy obsessed with time. That, perhaps more than the voice in his ear, is what drew him to search for Glendower. A man whose legacy lasted for hundreds of years. A king whose life didn’t end with his death. Blue knows why Gansey, who has died twice, is a little obsessed with the idea of forever.

The problem is that Blue doesn’t need marriage for forever. She is content to wake up beside Gansey, decades in the future, when his hair is salt-and-pepper and his wireframes are ever-present, and still call him her boyfriend. Her partner. The man she has spent a lifetime loving.

Blue Sargent does not want to call him her husband.

Gansey knows this. This is why, at the mandatory Gansey family dinners or campaigns where Blue shakes dozens of politicians’ hands, he uses his bright laugh to deflect questions about the two of them. _Why aren’t they married yet? Is the rumor that they’re engaged not true? They were high school sweethearts, right, shouldn’t they be settling down? Maybe having a couple of kids?_

After Blue snapped at one old man that she was actually more than a baby-making machine, Gansey started responding by saying that he wasn’t ready to settle down yet, too much world to see, too much fire in his veins. The old men and their younger wives smiled at him, still joyful and indulgent at the idea of Gansey the intrepid explorer. He’d discovered Glendower’s tomb after all, and the rest of the world hadn’t been expecting magic — they had thought the old king’s bones were a fine and complete discovery.

Gansey’s smile had been flawless when well-meaning strangers compliemented him on achieving his quest and finding his king, but his eyes had been pained.

Blue, standing by his side through years of charity galas, just squeezes his hand in support.

 

***

 

Then Adam graduates college and he and Ronan get married.

The wedding is something that could only exist for the two of them. It’s whimsy and dreams and meticulous planning. It’s Opal as a flower girl, tripping down the aisle at St. Agnes, unstable with her hooves hidden in her boots. It’s Gansey in a handsome suit as the best man and Blue in a homemade dress as the maid of honor. It’s Declan standing where a father should. It’s Matthew coming forward with the rings. It’s the content smile on Ronan’s face, nothing sharp about it. The way he kisses Adam’s hand after he slides the ring on. It’s the way Adam seems happy, but more than that, the way he seems satisfied, like he’s not reaching for a different life anymore.

The reception is at the Barnes, which is decorated by impossible flowers and party favors that make Irish music and fireflies that linger in the air like fairy lights. Blue knows that these are all dream things, but Adam’s college friends stare with wide eyes and even some of the psychics, the cousins who have had fewer occasion to hang around Ronan Lynch but who decided to attend the wedding, seem grudgingly impressed.

She knows the reception is outside so Adam can hear Cabeswater _hum_.

Blue spends a few hours dancing with Henry — who thinks the whole wedding i _s absolutely splendid_ — and Opal and Matthew. Then it’s time for the couple’s first dance, because Ronan is a sucker for tradition and Adam is a sucker for Ronan.

They do one proper dance, hands clasped together between their chests, Adam’s head tucked under Ronan’s chin, both men swaying side to side in small steps. They can’t see each other’s faces, but Blue can, and they’re both smiling softly.

The last notes of the song are interrupted by a bass drum and screaming that has half the wedding guests groaning.

_SQUASH ONE, SQUASH TWO_

Adam pushes Ronan back, his expression horrified, and Ronan is laughing in delight. It is absolutely impossible to dance to the Murder Squash Song because it lacks any discernible beat, or tempo, or melody. They dance anyway. Adam is indulgent and incredulant, and somehow listening to the murder squash song has put a look on his face that says _how did I get lucky enough to be able to marry this idiot?_

And for the first time, Blue thinks that maybe marriage isn’t about belonging to someone, but belonging with them.

After the ear-bleeding experience that is Ronan’s favorite song, a more normal wedding playlist resumes. The couples hit the dance floor, lured out by the love Ronan and Adam leave in their wake. Blue sees Maura and Mr. Grey spinning, Declan and Ashley swaying, Helen Gansey leading her husband around the field.

Then Gansey is in front of her, hand extended in offering, and Blue forgets about the others. She and Gansey dance the way Ronan and Adam did, pressed together. It’s not about the dancing. It’s about the two of them. It’s about Blue ear against Gansey’s chest, listening to his heartbeat. It’s about the way their fingers interlock, like every illicit hand-hold in the Camaro when they were teenagers. It’s about Blue leaning up onto her tiptoes and pressing the softest of kisses to Gansey’s lips because there’s no danger, not anymore.

“They seem happy,” says Gansey.

“They do,” says Blue. She never doubted they would be.

“It’s almost perfect,” says Gansey. “Them and you and Henry and Henrietta. It’s almost everything I ever wanted.”

“I miss him too,” says Blue, because she does.

Noah is gone, but he is remembered. She knows that for the rest of their lives, at every milestone and moment of family, they will miss him. His life should never have overlapped with any of theirs, but they will never be fully complete without him.

It is an imperfect world. But it’s also a wonderful one.

 

***

 

It is only a few months later that Gansey’s parents begin to put more pressure on him to get married. Gansey and Blue are living together in a rather large apartment in D.C. Blue can’t quite pay her half of the rent, but she saw the longing in Gansey’s eyes when he saw the place, the same kind of love he had for Monmoth Manufacturing, and she capitulated. Some days, letting Gansey pay for more than half of the rent grates more than others.

The Ganseys are overly polite when they bring up the topic at a luncheon.

“Have the two of you spoken about getting married?” Asks Mrs. Gansey.

“We haven’t,” says Gansey. “We’ve been pretty busy with school and the foundation.”

The foundation is their love-child. They hold fundraisers and desseminate information in order to aid with the preservation of important historical and environmental sites. When they can, they try to protect sites that are both. The Henrietta mountains that contain the tomb of Owen Glendower was one of the first sites they were able to protect.

“You know, Richard,” says Richard Campbell Gansey II, “you can’t keep a lady waiting too long for a proposal. She might think your intention isn’t marriage.”

For a moment, Blue can’t stand him. Intentions for marriage? Who talks like that?

Then she remembers that Gansey’s father had once fired a man from his wife’s campaign at Blue’s say-so, because the man had been a creep. The creep had been incredulous. _You’re firing a well-respected media strategist like me because some poor psychic’s daughter told you to?_ Mr. Gansey’s voice had been cold. _You will not speak that way about my family. Pack your things and go._

“That’s alright,” says Blue. “I don’t need to be proposed to. I know Gansey is it for me.”

The Ganseys give her polite smiles and Helen shifts the conversation to the inadequacy of the shrimp crudités at some senator’s latest function.

Later, Blue overhears Gansey and his father speaking in his office.

“You have to get married soon, son. You’ve been dating Blue for six years. It’s far past time. People are beginning to talk.”

Gansey’s voice is pained but firm. “Jane doesn’t want to get married, Dad.”

There is a heavy silence.

“Does she intend to leave you?” Mr. Gansey’s voice is surprised, like it hadn’t occurred to him before that Blue might be anything but in love with his son.

“No,” says Gansey. “It’s not me she objects to. It’s the concept of marriage.”

“Surely you can talk her around,” says Mr. Gansey.

Gansey laughs, a short, humorless sound. “I’m not going to ask her to compromise her principles for me.”

“That’s… gallant of you,” Mr. Gansey says. “But it doesn’t matter. People will never stop theorizing on why the two of you aren’t married. They will whisper behind their hands at every party.”

“They have been doing so for years,” Gansey says. “Let them. If they can’t see that I love her, a ring won’t do anything to change that.”

That night, Gansey is quiet on the ride home. Blue listens to the roar of the Camaro’s lack of an engine, and she thinks about Adam making a bargain with a forest. She thinks about Gansey exchanging his first real home for Ronan’s high school diploma. She thinks about the taste of her first kiss kiss: _let it be to kill the demon_.

Blue thinks about sacrifice.

 

***

 

Three weeks later, Blue brings it up.

“If you want to get married, I would be willing to do it.”

Gansey, who had been buttering a piece of toast, freezes. “What?”

“I would be willing to marry you,” says Blue.

Gansey looks at her for a long time without speaking. This is the Gansey she had fallen in love with, soft and inquisitive and longing.

When Gansey finally speaks, he is quiet. “No.”

Blue’s eyebrows raise. “No?”

Gansey drops the bread on the counter and walks over to join Blue on the couch. “I don’t want you to be willing to marry me. I want you to want to marry me.”

Blue doesn’t know what to say to that. It is not something she can ever give him.

Then Gansey smiles, and it’s his real smile. “Barring that, Blue, I just want to be with you.”

Blue knows he means it because he says her name. Her real name.

“I love you,” says Blue seriously. “I remember a time before I loved you, and I remember a time when I was trying not to love you, but there will never be a time after I have stopped loving you. You are my now and forever, Gansey. Not because you’re supposed to be my soulmate. Not because a piece of paper says it. I don’t care for fate or the law or the church, not when it comes to this. I love you because of who you are and who I am. As long as we’re Gansey and Blue, I will love you. I never really had a choice. But if I did, I would choose you. Again and again and forever. Just not as your wife.”

Gansey’s eyes are shiny with tears and his smile is radiant. Blue thinks that it’s a good thing the public never gets to see this smile, because they would all be blinded by the joy in it. This smile is _hers_.

“I love you too,” he says. “From the minute I called you a prostitute at Nino’s, it was over for me. You understand the parts of me that other people don’t even know exist. You fascinate me, Blue. You show me corners of the world that I haven’t thought to look at. You make me a better person every day that we’re together. I want hundreds of thousands of days with you. I want you to always be by my side, as my partner. I want you to be happy. I won’t lie and say marriage doesn’t matter to me, because it does. I would marry you if I could, but you wouldn’t be Blue Sargent if you married me. And Blue Sargent is my favorite person in the world.”

They grin at each other, love-struck. Then Blue leans forwards to capture Gansey’s lips. Their kiss remakes the world, two young people in a city built for change who loved thanks to and in spite of fate.

When Blue pulls back, she is smiling. “That was the best non-proposal I ever heard.”

Gansey’s feelings are written all across his face. It’s the same look Adam Parrish-Lynch had on his face at his wedding. He’s settled. “Your non-proposal was quite special as well. I should have known that you would not-propose first.”

Blue leans her forehead against his with a soft, wicked grin. “Always.”

“Always,” echoes Gansey.

 

***

 

Blue Sargent never does marry Richard Campbell Gansey III. But she never leaves him either.

**Author's Note:**

> I've read quite a few future-fics where Blue and Gansey end up married and it's treated as super romantic that she would compromise her values for him. So I wanted to write one where she didn't.
> 
> Kudos and comments are always appreciated.


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